One Husband Several Wives and One Wife Several Husbands

“History repeats itself” is no vain statement and it surely does if what has been reported in the newspapers the other day is true. The repetition here has a small twist, that’s all.

Some years back, probably in Nineties, a man claiming to be an NRI married many young women, stayed with them for a day or two, looted their jewellery and vanished out of sight.

His modus operandi was like this. He would advertise in the newspapers that he was on a short leave from USA /UK, and was looking for a working woman kind of bride. There was craze in that era to go abroad, especially USA and settle down there for a long spell. Many young women like nurses, teachers, clerical staffs, secretaries and even some junior executives responded. Our hero chose one who had a good income, went for bride seeing along with a middle aged woman, who he claimed as his elder sister; taking a woman with him, added credibility to his game.

After some serious interrogation, he approved of the candidate and fixed the marriage date which was just 4 or 5 days away; he must go through the wedding ritual fast before his leave expired. Oh, was the bride happy? And the parents were thrilled too. The man demanded no dowry but the bride may be sent with her personal jewellery and clothes. No parents could have asked for more.

The marriage ceremony was kept very simple. The wedded couple had their first night in a hotel in the bridal attire. The bride couldn’t spend the night wearing her full jewellery. She took them out and kept them in the cupboard or dressing table. During the night our hero collected them and vanished before it was dawn. You can imagine the plight of the bride.

In another case, he rang up the bride-to-be and asked her to buy an air ticket, both ways, to New Delhi. He would be back on the following day, well in time for the wedding. That was the last the parents heard of him. He converted the ticket into cash and disappeared.

He succeeded in seven cases using different duping methods and the eighth turned out to be his Waterloo.

During a social party one young thing proudly announced that she was getting married to an NRI, who was on a short leave in India and showed his photograph to the hostess. “How is it? He is marrying me five days from today….” conveyed the hostess. Becoming suspicious, the hostess laid a trap for him. “Where are you living Mister Suresh?” she asked of him on his contact number. He gave the address of a hotel. On checking back, there was no one there by that name. On further probe, they discovered that he was a part time clerk from a nearby city.

The police nabbed him and took him to court on a case of cheating. He along with his paramour got 8 years in jail.

And now comes a similar case but this time the villain is a woman.

One Manimegala from Pollachi,South India, joined a computer centre, run by a differently abled man. Manimegala made him fall in love with her and after a few weeks she indicated to him obliquely that she was interested in marrying a differently abled man and give him a comfortable home life. Rathinakumar fell for her sweet talk and proposed to her.

Even before the marriage Manimegala had tranferred his 10 cents land in her two brother’s names.

After the marriage in November 2011, she continued to extract money and valuables from Rathinakumar and left him one fine morning.

Perplexed at the turn of events, Rathinakumar begged her to come back to him. Strangely, the family members of the girl threatened to finish him off.

Following this development, Rathinakumar lodged a police complaint. Preliminary investigations revealed that Manimegala had conned several men in this manner. Her first marriage was with one Sathish Kumar from Tirupur some years back. He was dumped in due course after she had robbed him of valuables and money. It’s not known how many more men she married and threw out before she set her eyes upon the poor computer centre owner.

The police are now collecting more information to find out how many husbands she had lured and deceived.